changehistory | Convenient, if a flawed description of who I am

I'd think it would be more a measure of accomplishment. Not many have managed it.

How close is inconvenient to regret?

That rather depends on how it all goes, I'd think.

Do you regret loving me?

No.

Okay. That's all I wanted to know.

So... anything you want to tell me?

I'd ask you the same thing, but I'm not sure I want to know the answer.

...Probably a great many things. Anything you want to know?

I won't answer that right now, but I wouldn't call it regret.

It's not what I want to know. It's what I do know. That you're a father.

I suppose that's something.

...

Nathan told you, then. I wanted to tell you Peter, to get it out there, out of the way, no more secrets, but he asked to be the one to tell you, and I honored his request, just like I honored yours and told him we were only friends.

He knows we weren't just friends.

Ah.

Past tense?

Does it matter? The first thing he did was step away from me, Adam.

It matters rather a lot to me, yes.

Sometimes we need distance to process things, Peter. The one thing I am sure of in this whole bloody mess is that the two of you love each other enough to get through anything.

He knows I still care about you, that I plan to tell Caitlin. He knows it's not past tense only.

He did know you and Mom are... right? Because he does now.

I'm...glad.

Yes, he knew. He knew just about everything except how I felt about you, just as you know just about everything except that he was mine.

... yours.

Huh. Yeah, don't put it that way.

...I'm sorry? How would you prefer me to term it? He's the first child I have known I've had since my twin boys were killed in Milan 250 years ago.

For thirty years, I regretted not taking your mother away from Arthur when things went bad, taking her and Nathan and just...leaving, making a new life somewhere. I regretted it until the day I realized who you were. By then? When you told me your last name and I knew? It was too late. I couldn't have stopped what I felt.

And then, the only thing I could feel was relief, because if I had done that...you wouldn't have been born, and I wouldn't have...because I wanted you more than I wanted that dream.

For the first time, I was grateful to Arthur, because whatever else he did, he gave the world you. For the first time I was glad I had been locked away, not part of your lives, not "Uncle Adam" or whatever craziness would have ensued if I'd been out and about and still part of my former friends' lives, watching you grow, suspecting your brother was my son. Glad, Peter, I was actually happy that I had been in that hell, because without it, I never would have...

So, how would you like me to put it, now that I know? Now that I have those conflicts raging inside of me--the life I wanted more than anything and proof, every day, that it was lost. That your brother loves a man who was a monster in ways that go so far beyond anything I have done--you saw what he did--in my head. And that...I lost him to that. My son. Mine. He doesn't trust me. He thinks I'm using him. He thinks I'm using you. That it is all some part of a twisted game, and there is nothing I can say or do that will ever change his mind. Not truly.

And all of that, every bit of it, clashes up against the fact that when I look at my future, now, and think of what I want...all I see is you. Once again, I am caught, loving someone, wanting something that I may never have, all the while forced every day to face everything that I could have had and lost with my own stupidity, well knowing that what I lost before may cost me what I want now and that I will never be free of the mistakes I made. Thirty years of torture and hell weren't enough punishment, clearly. God has a sick sense of humor.

Do you plan to do that now? Take my Mother and Nathan and start your family again? Is that what you want, Adam?

I've told you I'm not leaving but, dammit Adam! My life just turned into a soap opera. My lover is also bedding my mother and is my brother's Father. What's next? Caitlin is my long lost sister?!

Not in the way you make it sound. I would like to get to know him. To build a relationship with him, yes. He's my son. That matters to me. Monty, Simon, Claire--yes. I want to be part of that. But not to the exclusion of you. God, did you even read what I said? How could I possibly...

And I'm desperately in love with the son of the mother of my only child who was raised by a man I hate rather a lot. We're all caught in this, Peter, not just you. Nathan, you, your mother and yes, me. The only one not suffering through the confusion and the "what does this mean?" is your mother because she doesn't know. Just because I've lived a lot longer...doesn't mean I have the slightest clue how to handle this. I've never had a grown child before and I've fallen truly in love so few times I can count them on one hand.

Edited 2008-01-25 19:06 (UTC)

I haven't even seen those three since we came back. Claire... isn't answering her phone and we're not allowed to see the boys. Slowly my whole family is falling apart and it's a lot my fault. Family's thicker than anything, Adam. I know that.

If she knew, she'd leave you... or destroy me. I don't see my Mother as one to handle sharing with someone she hates. Just my luck you fall in love twice in one lifetime. But we have lives beyond this one.

It's not your fault. None of it is your fault, Peter.

Probably, yes. I don't know. She's...I don't know what she'd do, not anymore.

Maybe, maybe we have lives beyond this one, or maybe we don't. I have a vengeance crazed boy who knows I didn't stay in the grave where he put me probably looking for me, who well knows how to kill us, and can skip through time to do it, and there's no coming back from that. Nevermind that I'm fairly certain the Company has figured that out as well, and me? I'm disposable to them now that they know about Claire.

I won't let him hurt you, Adam. Anything he can do, I can do as well. And a lot more. The Company made the wrong enemy in me. They don't realize it, or maybe they do and that was why they wanted me drugged, but I won't let them or Hiro hurt you.

You're not disposable to me.

You're not there all the time, Peter. You can't be. Hiro could just...pop in, freeze time, kill me, and pop back out in an instant. And they could take me and do away with me before you ever realized they had me.

Not if we destroy the Company. But you're right. I'll figure out something. I promise. Adam, trust in me. Please. Someone has to.

It's not a lack of trust, Peter. It is a pragmatic assessment that the Company is still a threat until they are destroyed, and that Hiro could figure out I'm gone and appear at any moment. In a fair fight, I could beat him--but while I didn't think he had it in him to execute a man with time frozen, now I'm fairly sure he could, and would. For the first time in my life, I have to face the fact that tomorrow, literally, may never come, and I won't even have a warning. It's funny how that changes your perspective.

Convenient, if a flawed description of who I am

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